


Pathways

by venndaai



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Timelines, Archon Dorian Pavus, Dimension Travel, Gender Identity, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Dagna/Sera (Dragon Age), POV Alternating, Tama Bull, conversion therapy, well actually Accidental Young Child Acquisition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:09:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25943362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: A mysterious magical amulet sends Dorian, Bull, and Dagna on a journey of exploration through alternate pathways their lives could have taken.For the Adoribull Big Bang 2020.
Relationships: Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Livia Herathinos/Dorian Pavus
Comments: 18
Kudos: 39
Collections: Actually Adoribull Fic, The Adoribull Big Bang 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic deals with some complicated messy topics, including magical conversion therapy and gender identity questioning. For more spoilery details on how these things are handled, read the end notes.

**PROLOGUE**

THE AMULET

The Arcanist was well known in Minrathous. Ten years had passed since her first appearances and in all that time her fame and celebrity had only grown, not withered. Dorian thought it probably helped that her appearances were so sporadic; it created an air of excitement and mystique. She had no residences in the city, tending to appear suddenly and expect lodging at the Imperial Circle. The Circle was only too happy to oblige. 

During her original residence in the city, her paths had not crossed with Dorian’s, though he’d heard of her; even at the lowest points in his life, gossip had always managed to penetrate through the buzz of alcohol and self absorption and despair. He remembered sparing a thought or two to be vaguely fascinated. A brilliant arcanist, who happened to be a dwarf? What a wonderfully strange creature. As fascinating a monster as himself. 

In Skyhold, she had been a fragment of connection to the life he’d had in the North. He’d brought books and theories and strange things collected during battles down to the fire and ice of the Undercroft, and for a few hours of focused conversation he could have been back in Minrathous, doing research in the Circle. He could have been discussing the Veil with Gereon and Livia. He could have been something other than an exile. 

Then the Arcanist and Skyhold’s Red Jenny had collided into each other with the explosive force of a magister’s fireball, and suddenly Dorian was interacting with Dagna out above ground in the sunlight, or in the warm firelight of an evening at the Herald’s Rest. Suddenly they were _social acquaintances._ There was something about the situation that made Dorian feel a little odd. Maybe it was only how free and unguarded Sera was with her affections.

On the eve of his departure from Skyhold, Sera had kept him up late drinking. He’d pretended annoyance, but secretly been deeply grateful for the delaying of the moment when he’d return to his room, and to Bull. 

“We’ll keep an eye on you,” Sera had said expansively, splashing his shirt with beer. “I’ll keep an eye on you. Both eyes. I’ll come check up on you, just wait. You’re not getting away.”

“Naturally,” he’d said, sighing. “You’ll just take a stroll over to Minrathous. Easy peasy for the great Red Jenny. I’m sure your network extends throughout the Imperium.”

She’d smirked at him. “Not _yet_ ,” she’d said. “Got _plans_.”

At the time he’d thought it was just the drink talking. 

Sometimes he thought he’d never learn to stop underestimating her. 

Four years after his first return to the city, and four days after a would-be assassin was hung upside-down naked in his town house’s atrium fountain, tied by a red ribbon, Dorian heard from Mae that the Arcanist was finally returning to visit the Circle. 

“Long absence can do wonders for one’s appeal, it seems,” she said, sipping a very early glass of wine. “As can involvement with a bit of world-saving, even if we’re still officially denying any of that happened. Ivor is over the moon. He’s been head over heels for her for years. Him and half the Ambassadoria.”

“You can tell them all they should start drowning their sorrows,” Dorian said tartly. “I happen to know she’s very much taken. By someone they do not wish to cross.” 

It was only as the words dropped from his lips and the wine in his stomach seemed to sour that he was hit by the weight of a large and unexpected misery. Andraste preserve him, he missed Sera. Missed her so badly he was going to start crying in a moment if he didn’t get himself under control. 

He’d pocketed the red ribbon, after disposing of the assassin. Hours later, after Mae’s departure, Dorian pulled it out and wound it around his wrist, as he walked upstairs and out onto his balcony. The Minrathous summer night was hot and humid. Bells tolled out the hour from chantries across the city, the loudest sound coming from the Imperial Cathedral, less than a mile from his fashionable street. 

The crystal hung around his neck. He touched it, gently, and felt it hum to life. 

A moment later- “Hey there.” 

Dorian’s body didn’t know whether to tense or relax. He turned his face into the slight breeze. “Sera left me a present today,” he said. “Did you know she was coming here?”

“I got a hint of it, maybe,” the Iron Bull replied, from across hundreds of miles, mountains and deserts. 

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Got the impression she wanted it to be kind of a surprise.”

“She hung a would-be assassin by his ankles in my well.”

A pause. “An assassin.”

“Very much taken care of,” Dorian said. He leaned on the balcony railing, and pressed three fingers to his forehead. “You wanted me to tell you when these things happen, so- here you are. It’s taken care of. No one else will try for a while, after this.”

More silence.

“Good for Sera,” the Bull said at last. Tone complicated by something. Dorian could guess at it. “Glad she’s keeping busy.” Pause. Dorian tried to shut out the sounds of the city around him, tried to hear any small noises that might paint him a picture of where the Bull was, what he was doing. Nothing. “She’d been missing you, I think.”

“I don’t think she’s in town for me,” Dorian said. “Dagna’s returned to the Circle. Enchanter Maximus is thrilled. No one seems to have much idea _why_ she’s back- I thought the southern Divine was keeping her very well funded, down in Orlais.”

“Hmm.” Dorian heard a rustle. A bedroll, in a tent? A blanket, in an inn? “I could ask around.”

It was a serious offer, Dorian knew. One he’d taken advantage of before. It had been very useful, on a number of occasions, to have access to someone in the South who was drinking buddies with half the major political players in Orlais, who could tease out relevant information with the efficiency of a trained operative and relay it without the weeks’ delay of physical messengers. 

“No need,” Dorian said. “I’ll go ask her myself. We’re- friends. I suppose.” He didn’t know why he felt such resistance to saying the word. “I’ve been told I need to work on reaching out.”

There was a faint smell of smoke, on the weak breeze. Someone was burning something, out in the city. He let go of the crystal for a moment, reached out across the Veil. Just a fingers length across. Enough to brush the wisps that followed him everywhere, drawn to the fire of his magic. They were eager enough to please, when he instructed them to fly across the surrounding miles of urban landscape, looking for the memories he gave them of burning buildings, charred bodies, screams. 

It was almost certainly nothing. There was often smoke on the air, in the capital city of the Imperium. But he had too many of those memories of fire. Better safe than sorry.

“Bull,” he said, picking up the crystal again.

“Yeah,” came the immediate response. 

“I know it’s not the usual time, but might we meet next week, instead of in a month?” His throat felt dry. He swallowed. Sometimes one simply had to push through. “I can’t have a fight with you when you’re hundreds of miles away,” he said. “It simply doesn’t hold the same satisfaction. I’d like to- to see you, and- get it out of my system.”

“Yeah,” the Bull’s voice said, from out of the crystal, even faster this time. “I want to see you too, Dorian.”

“Don’t get sappy,” Dorian said. He closed his eyes. The wisps were returning. A bonfire was burning, in the Forum. An early All Souls’ Day celebration. He wondered if Sera were out there, dancing with the cityfolk, pulling pranks, feeling the heat of the fire on her face. 

He wanted to ask Bull where he was. He didn’t. 

So he decided to have his calling card sent to the Arcanist, where it would probably languish under a hefty stack of them. This plan which was absolutely a plan and not an evasion was disrupted when, far too early the next morning, Dorian was interrupted in his bath with the message that Arcanist Dagna had come calling upon Magister Pavus. 

“I forgot how hot it is here,” the Arcanist said, without so much as a greeting, when Dorian’s housekeeper showed her into his receiving room. “How do you stand it? Ooh, you’ve got those little cakes, nice.”

“Help yourself,” Dorian said, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch. He sipped his tea- a very expensive elfroot blend that did wonders to soothe the pain of early mornings. A gift from Varric, delivered via one of his army of cousins who did business with Mae. Dorian really would have to think of something good to send back in exchange. 

“Sera says she’s staying here for a while, but she’s busy right now, so she’ll go drinking with you later,” Dagna said. “I think. She gave me a message for you, sort of.” The message, it turned out, came in the form of a book. Magical Traditions of the Avaar, a collection of research papers published by the University of Orlais. There was a forward by Professor Bram Kenric, and an inscription in the flyleaf, written in Orlesian in a delicate hand- a note from Josephine. There were also, defacing the table of contents and most of the first chapter, copious doodles. Mostly of genitals, or bees, but there were some pages overlaid with astonishingly vivid renderings of Minrathous architecture, or maps of city quarters, with little arrows and labels and clumps of unreadable script. Deciphering it was certainly going to be a challenge.

Well, it would make a nice break from military reports, anyway. 

“Well,” Dorian said, and put the book down to take another sip of his tea. “Did you visit me to deliver this, then?” He winced at himself a little, immediately after he’d stopped speaking. Rudeness appeared to be the habit he just couldn’t break. 

Fortunately for him, Dagna never noticed. “No, no,” she said. “I came to show you this!”

She put an amulet down on the parlor table. 

Dorian looked at it. It was fairly unostentatious, as amulets went, particularly in the Imperium. It appeared to be made of serpentine, wrought in the form of a tree that split as it grew, trunk separating and splitting into branches that eventually wound back together to close the loop. There were no decorative gems or any kind of inscription. The amulet hung from a simple silver chain. But there was something about it. Dorian concentrated. There was a very low hum in the air, and he thought he could feel a slight disturbance in the Veil. 

“Look at the other side,” Dagna said. Dorian turned the amulet over, gingerly, using the edges of his fingernails.

“Ah,” he said. 

The other side did have an inscription- one that was very familiar in its base design. 

“It’s like your time travel one, right?” Dagna said. “I made plenty of notes, back then, so it was easy to compare- the central rune is the same but the adjacent ones aren’t. I can tell there’s lyrium channels inside it, but I wanted to exhaust my options before cracking it open.”

“Where did you find this?” Dorian asked. 

“I can’t tell you,” Dagna said. “The Inquisitor made me promise. It’s top secret, at least for now. I just picked this up- I had no idea it was going to turn out to be so special, but it did! And you’re still the world expert on time magic, even if you waste time on politics instead of research-”

“I don’t research time magic any more because it’s dangerous,” Dorian snapped. “I thought you agreed not to either.” 

“I don’t think it’s quite time magic, though,” Dagna said. “Do you? Doesn’t it seem like something a little different?” 

“Hm,” Dorian said, refusing to give in. He stared at the thing, where it sat innocuously, half in sun and half in shadow. “I’d love to help you,” he said, and found to his surprise that it wasn’t a lie. It really had been too long since he’d tackled a thaumaturgical problem, and Dagna was generally a pleasant research partner. “But I’m leaving town tomorrow. I won’t be back for two weeks.”

“Are you going south?” Dagna said. “I’ll come with you. I was about ready to head back to Orlais anyways.”

Dorian shifted his stare to her face. “But you just arrived,” he said, incredulous. “The Circle will be appalled.”

“I didn’t come for them,” Dagna said. “I came to keep Sera company. She gets bored on long journeys.” 

Dorian blinked. “I thought she came here for you.”

Dagna laughed, and slapped him lightly on the thigh. “She came for you, idiot! She was worried about you.”

Which left him irritatingly speechless.

Dorian was accustomed to making his trips to the border alone. He enjoyed the time, usually, traveling anonymously, no meetings to keep track of and no subtle social intricacies to navigate. It reminded him of his time in the South. 

(He took a moment now to pause and laugh at the idea of telling the Dorian Pavus of eight years ago that eventually he’d look back on those two years as a wonderful vacation from the rest of his life. Oh, to be young and stupid again.) 

Travelling with Dagna was… different. Not bad, really, just different. They talked about magic the entire time, Dorian dusting off and flexing old muscles that had gone mostly unused for years. Dagna was a little calmer than she’d been at Skyhold, and a lot more patient. Married life agreed with her. 

(It hurt, a little, that he hadn’t been at the wedding. He still had the invitation, carefully preserved in a drawer in his study. But the political situation had been too precarious, and he hadn’t been able to justify leaving Mae to deal with it alone. Bull had gone, and activated the crystal so that Dorian could sit in his small garden and listen to the Inquisitor’s laughter and Sera’s crying and the explosion when Dagna’s decorative fireworks went wrong.)

In the evenings, across a table in a high end inn, they’d examine the amulet. Nothing productive came of these examinations. “There’s a small field laboratory at the villa,” Dorian said. “We can do some experiments there.” 

“Sounds good,” Dagna said with a grin.

Unlike his very first journey south, both of them now had no need to worry about expenses, and they stayed in separate rooms each night. So Dorian had enough privacy, in the evenings, to talk to Bull, if he wished to. 

He didn’t. He’d meant it when he said he didn’t want to fight through the crystal. And Bull didn’t try to contact him. He almost never initiated a conversation, even when Dorian was in a snit or a black mood and didn’t call for weeks. Sometimes in those gaps Dorian would get a call from the Inquisitor, checking in on the political situation and sharing gossip about their friends, and at the end of the call he’d get a simple, “I think Bull is worried about you.”

“He can tell me that himself then,” Dorian would snap, and an hour later in the bath he’d pick up the crystal intending to give the Bull a piece of his mind about it. But when he heard the Bull’s voice, saying hello as though they’d spoken only a minute ago, instead he’d end up just asking about the Chargers. How their day had gone. What ridiculous things they’d done lately, what Rocky had blown up last. 

_I’ll see him in a few days,_ Dorian thought, staring up at an oak inn ceiling, and despite the tension he seemed to carry around with him constantly these days, the thought of that made him smile, in the dark where no one could see him. 

Thirty miles north of the border, they left the imperial highway, riding along smaller roads and occasionally cutting through fields. Dorian was very familiar with the route, but tried to vary his exact path each time, and always made sure to look over his shoulder frequently, and set a wisp to guard his back. He’d always thought this leg of the journey was the most likely location for an assassination. At the very least, a spy trying to discover where Magister Pavus kept disappearing off to. 

He felt a bit guilty that he was bringing Dagna along for this. She was what Bull would call a civilian, for all that she apparently lacked any fear of death and would regularly singe her eyebrows off with her experiments back in Skyhold. But when he brought up his concerns Dagna laughed them off. 

The villa looked the same as ever, when Dorian rode over the last hill, and seeing it he couldn’t control himself. He kicked his horse into a canter, the bucolic scenery blurring past, and commanded it abruptly to a stop, sliding off of the beast’s back and then sliding through mud- it must have rained overnight- through the garden gate. Bull was there, examining the grape vines. He turned when Dorian stumbled through the gate. 

“Dagna’s here,” Dorian said, idiotically. “She came with me. We’re going to do experiments. In the barn.”

“Okay,” the Bull said.

There was a new scar on the edge of his cheek. He hadn’t mentioned that, the last time they’d talked. 

“Tomorrow,” Dorian said. “We’ll do them tomorrow. She can stay in the guest room. I’ll tell her not to do any potentially poisonous, explosive or otherwise destructive experiments inside the house.”

“Sounds good,” the Bull said. 

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Dorian said, “because I want to spend the rest of today being ravished until I forget how to spell _thaumaturgical theory_.”

The Bull smiled. 

  
  


He fell asleep, an hour later, in the huge luxurious bed. Embarrassing, but well, it had been a tiring journey, and the sun was low in the sky. Lower when he woke. He lay there on the silk sheets for a while, feeling the weight of happiness like a knife in the chest.

His dressing gown was hanging over the back of the bedroom armchair. Bull must have left it there for him. He shrugged into it, enjoying his body aching for a reason other than aging. There were slippers, too, to insulate his feet from the chill of the floor tiles. 

He walked through the inner courtyard, squinting up at the early evening sun, and back into the long shadows and into the kitchen. It was large, designed for a full staff of servants; but the Bull still made it look small, sitting at the kitchen table chatting with Dagna. She was enthusiastically eating a bowl of what smelled suspiciously like nug stew. The remains of a fire smouldered in the large fireplace. 

“I am not eating nug for dinner,” Dorian announced. 

“Want to walk into town?” the Bull asked.

“Absolutely not.”

The Bull shrugged. “There’s bread and cheese in the pantry.” 

“Blessed be the Maker.”

“I’ve decided which experiment I want to try first,” Dagna told him.

Dorian groaned. “Tomorrow, please.” 

“All right,” she said, unbothered. 

He meant to have a Conversation with Bull, before he went to bed, because they’d have to have it all out at some point and it would be better to do it sooner so it wouldn’t hang over them for days, but he fell asleep in one of the comfortable chairs in the courtyard, and barely registered it when someone picked him up and carried him gently to the bedroom. 

He woke up to waving curtains and birdsong. 

The barn was located several hundred feet from the main complex, and had been empty for many years, which made it a good location for potentially dangerous experiments. There hadn’t been too many of those actually carried out; usually Dorian found himself occupied with more pressing matters while in residence at the villa. Dagna partitioned the barn into painted sections, and placed the amulet on a metal table in the center. 

“Let’s try something simple, first,” Dagna said. “Dorian, could you try activating it with a bit of arcane energy?” 

Before reaching towards the amulet, Dorian turned towards the Bull, leaning against the barn wall a few feet away. “Are you certain you want to be in here, Amatus?” 

“Aw, don’t worry about me, I’m good.” Dorian narrowed his eyes at him. “No, seriously. If I’m not in here I’m just going to be worrying about it.” 

“It’s your choice,” Dorian said. “All right. Here goes.” 

He gathered mana into his hands, shaping it the same way he did when casting Haste, and reached out to touch the amulet-

Nothing happened.

“Hm,” Dorian said. “Anticlimactic,” and he picked the amulet up. 

There was a searingly, blindingly bright flash of light. His fingers closed on the amulet instinctively. He had a confused impression of some great force picking him up and flinging him through the air, and of being caught by broad strong arms, and then-

He opened his eyes, mostly aware of a pressing need to be violently sick. He was wildly disoriented, unsure even of up and down, but there was something solid under his knees, like a floor, too smooth to be the hard packed dirt floor of the barn. He was being held in a vicelike grip that was somewhat restricting his breathing, but he didn’t dare cough or he’d certainly throw up. Luckily the pressure eased, the arms relaxing. He was carefully placed on whatever the smooth floor was, and familiar hands patted him gently, checking for injury. 

“I’m fine, amatus,” he managed to say, swallowing down bile. 

“Just checking,” the Bull’s voice rumbled. “Damn, your magic shit did something weird this time.”

Dorian opened his eyes. The surface beneath him was a mosaiced floor, Tevinter style, high quality marble tesserae. Spit was dripping from his mouth down onto the tiles. He wiped his mouth hurriedly and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, shoving the amulet inside his robes. 

It immediately became obvious that they had a major problem. They had been inside a dark barn; now they were in some grand, lavishly appointed residence. The first thing any child learned in a Tevinter Circle was that teleportation was a fantasy. Magic could do many things, but it could not compress the fabric of mortal reality- only that of the Fade. And the second thing that child learned was how to recognize when they were in the Fade. Dorian always, always knew within seconds, and right now, every instinct was telling him that this was real. There was far more detail to the cool tile than fallible mortal memory could ever recreate. The Veil, when he focused on it, felt perfectly normal, even heavier than usual- reinforced with wards, as it was sometimes in Circles where the Veil had worn thin or in the homes of those who could pay for the service. 

“Dagna isn’t here,” Bull said. “Do you think she-”

“I don’t know,” Dorian snapped. “If she’s not here, probably she’s fine.” He tried to take a deep breath. “Or possibly we were only transported together because we were in physical contact, and she’s Maker knows where.” There was a deep well of panic just waiting for him to open that mental door. The memory of the Bull’s grip on his arm, hard enough to hurt, almost desperate- They were together. He could panic over Dagna, in the security of Bull being with him. He could indulge in luxurious terror over near-misses at a later date.

“Hang on,” Dorian said, “I know where we are. I think. I haven’t been in this particular room, but the decor is very- one moment.” There was a window, tremendously tall, the extremely long velvet drape pulled half aside to let in a shaft of golden afternoon light. Dorian strode across the mosaiced floor and peered out of it. The high-walled garden outside was also not one he’d ever walked through, but the style of it was as familiar as the gold wallpaper inside this room.

And then a quiet sound set his jangling nerves alarming, and he realized it was the sound of a quiet discreet knock on the door, and that of course he had more reasons to panic because Bull was in Minrathous, and it was exactly like the midpoint of a thousand nightmares he’d woken up from in an unpleasant sweat but this time he had a feeling there would be no waking up- 

The door swung open. Dorian reached instinctively towards the Fade. The Veil was naturally worn very thin all through the government quarter of Minrathous, but here in the Archon’s palace it was reinforced with very clever wards. The birthright pendant, a weight hanging on his chest next to the half tooth, hummed as the wards recognized it, and allowed him access to the other side. He could feel wisps beginning to pay interested attention to him, approaching him like curious fish. Next to him, in the physical world, he heard the Bull let out a breath, and heard the thud of his boot as he took a step back, subtly shifting position. 

Dorian stared into the face of an elven servant, a gray-haired small woman in the gold uniform of the Archon’s staff. He watched her notice Bull- a seven foot Qunari was very noticeable- and saw her eyes widen and her mouth open, and then her green eyes flickered over to Dorian. She took a confused step backwards. Dorian waited, tense, for the scream, his mind grinding over his limited options. He could kill this woman, and buy himself a few more moments, but what would he do with them? Where could they go? He could try and brazen his way out of the situation, but there really just wasn’t a good explanation for the two of them being here, and really it didn’t matter; the Lucerni’s enemies would jump on any scandal with even the hint of treason, and his life was probably now measured in months until public execution. The Bull’s in weeks before death from torture. 

Still, he heard himself say, “Wait-”

She froze, and then, after a long moment, dropped into a bow, her eyes fixed on the floor, though he could see her tremble with the urge to look up at the Bull. The fear of the mouse, looking away from its predator. “Yes, lord?” she breathed. 

Dorian felt his panic and despair shift into something else. 

“Direct me to the audience chamber,” he said, with all the Magisterial confidence and sneer he could summon. 

“My lord, I’m sorry,” she said. “Your lady wife is looking for you.”

“My _what_ ?” Dorian heard himself say. Oh _venhedis._

She turned to look at something behind her, and then hurriedly pulled the door open further, and then a woman swept in. A proper sweep, with flowing swirling floor length robes. To his left, Dorian felt the Bull take another step back, as though he were hoping to blend in with the curtains. For a moment it seemed to work: the new arrival was clearly entirely focused on Dorian.

It had been a number of years since Dorian had seen Livia Herathinos. They tended to both put a mild amount of effort into avoiding each other, not out of any animosity (at least on Dorian’s part) but rather an awareness of mutual awkwardness. There wasn’t much reason for their paths to cross; she, as far as he knew, avoided politics and focused on managing her family’s charitable works. 

He was quite certain that the last time he had seen her, she had looked nothing like this. Decked out in magister’s robes of an extravagance that would put even the finest peacocks of his acquaintance to shame, her face painted into an angular mask of gold and green, her neck and ears and fingers dripping with arcane jewelry. 

“There you are,” she said to Dorian. “Hiding again. And what on earth are you wearing? I told you three times the ambassador would be here at five-” 

Like the servant, she paused and did a double take when she saw Bull, but her reaction was not one of fear but of annoyance. Her pale face flushed red with anger. “What is this,” she said, very flatly. 

“Livia,” Dorian said, weakly. “This, uh.” He cleared my throat. “This is my bodyguard-”

She interrupted him. “Send him back wherever you got him immediately. _Venedhis_ , Dorian.” Her eyes flickered up the Bull’s height, calculating and depersonalizing in a way that was oddly shocking to Dorian, incongruous with the Livia he vaguely knew. “Where did you get him? The gladium? The mines? Whatever little joke you’re playing, this is not the time for it!” 

Dorian couldn’t stop himself from glancing over and up at Bull. Bull had gone very still, his normally animated face blank and unreadable. There was a sick jolt in Dorian’s stomach. He looked back at Livia. 

“You’re overreacting,” he said. Maybe there was a way out of this. Whatever this was. Maybe he could say he was going to return Bull, and they could bluff their way out onto the streets, and he could cast some kind of magic to cause a distraction while he found a place to hide Bull until he was able to find unscrupulous hireable persons to smuggle him out of the city- 

“This meeting is our last chance to hold this empire together,” Livia said. “You might not care about your own future, but I thought you at least cared about your _son’s._ ”

The ground dropped out from under Dorian’s feet. His knees seemed to give way under him. He felt Bull’s hand at his elbow, holding him up. How had the man gotten there so quickly?

“My son,” he said. 

There was a creak as the door swung open again, and a thump of a heavy staff hitting the ground.

“No,” said a voice that sounded far, far too much like his father’s. “ _My_ son.”


	2. The Archon

1

THE ARCHON

The hand on Dorian’s elbow flexed, gripped too tightly for a moment before relaxing. Slowly, as though under the influence of a time spell, Dorian raised his eyes.

The man standing in the doorway wore robes in the turquoise and gold of the Archon’s office. His hair was long, and hung straight and coiffed down to his shoulders. 

He waggled his fingers carelessly at the servant, still waiting, frozen, head bowed. “Have someone make some excuses to the ambassadors,” he said. “We wish to be undisturbed for a while.” 

“Don’t,” Livia said, and Dorian tore his attention from his doppleganger to the woman a few feet away, gathering power in her hands. A ripple passed through the fabric of reality inside the room, and a slight shimmer settled over Livia and the man in Archon’s robes. Staffless casting was impressive, and Dorian hadn’t thought Livia capable of it. Perhaps she’d had to learn to be. 

“Darling,” the Archon said, slowly. “I can handle this.”

“Even if I was inclined to leave you alone with two demons,” she said, “there’s the question of how they got in here. Don’t you think this is it? Our enemies finally striking directly?”

The Archon shook his head. “None of the wards are breached. And I don’t think they’re demons.”

“Oh?” she asked, contemptuous. “You think he’s some look alike Irian found in a gutter somewhere? Perhaps a long lost cousin? Look, he’s even got your mole, but maybe that’s very good makeup?”

“There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” Dorian said. “Look, I’m certain we can clear this up easily enough if we just take a moment-”

The Archon raised his beautiful, elaborate staff. Dorian flung out his hands and threw up a hasty barrier over himself and Bull, feeling his palms burn with the pain of large scale staffless casting. But when the base of the beautiful staff hit the floor, all that happened was pink fire ran out from it down the cracks between tiles to spread in a runic circle around the two interlopers, neatly trapping them in place. 

Dorian swallowed. “Sensible enough.”

“I’m willing to talk,” the Archon said. He stepped forward, towards them. The movement was hypnotic to Dorian, the way it was almost like watching himself in a mirror, but not quite; there was more power and authority in each step, and also more exhaustion. He took another step, and another, and then, quite gracefully considering his bulky robes, he folded himself up to sit cross legged on the floor, just the other side of the sizzling magical line from Dorian. He rested his staff across his knees. “Dearest Livia,” he said, without looking back at her, “make sure we won’t be disturbed.” 

Dorian looked up at Livia. She glared, mouth pursed, and then turned and paced quickly to the door, opening it just enough to have a hurried conversation with whoever stood outside. Then she turned and came back towards the Archon, veering off halfway through to pace a wide semicircle around Dorian and Bull’s prison, never turning her eyes away from them.

“So,” the Archon said, spreading his hands lazily. “Explain.”

“Time magic,” Dorian said. “What do you know of it?”

His doppleganger frowned. “Alexius’s old obsession? There were rumors years ago that he’d gotten it to work, before that cult he fell in with killed him. I never paid the gossip much attention.”

There was an emptiness to his voice that hurt to listen to. Perhaps because it was familiar. Dorian had heard it often when he spoke to his friends about his father’s death. A chill crept down his spine, and he had to remind himself that Gereon was not dead, that they had exchanged letters only a fortnight ago. 

“He did achieve it,” Dorian said. “Somewhat. Enough to demonstrate that it’s possible. An accident sent me here. Through time.”

The Archon looked him over again. “You don’t seem particularly younger or older than me.”

“Not backwards or forwards,” Dorian clarified. “Across. Somehow. I think I’m from… some kind of alternate timeline.” 

“I _see_ ,” the Archon said. He rocked back on his heels, gray-green eyes inscrutable. “You seemed surprised to hear that Livia and I had reproduced.”

Dorian hesitated. He tried to cover his sudden impression that he was skating on thin ice by ostentatiously brushing off his robes. “Yes, well,” he said, “in my timeline I haven’t had the honor of- reproduction.” 

“Too busy for children?” the Archon asked. He smiled, falsely. “Was it your Livia’s decision? Is she as much of a shrew as mine is?”

“Husband,” Livia said, from near the window. 

“Wife,” the Archon said mockingly back.

Dorian swallowed. “I have nothing but the greatest respect for the Livia Herathinos I know,” he said honestly. “We are not and have never been married.”

“Some other lucky woman then?” the Archon said, voice sharp as knives. “Or are you still living the carefree bachelor life?” 

Dorian breathed out, trying to make the exhalation last. He felt a gentle touch on his back shoulderblade. Bull, putting his hand there, ever so lightly.

“There are no women in my life,” he said, calmly. “Not like that.”

“What a pity,” the Archon said. 

_Why?_ Dorian wanted to ask. _Why would you ever agree to the thing I was willing to destroy myself to avoid?_ But he didn’t ask, because he was terribly afraid he knew the answer. He was treading on soft ice, and underneath was a great yawning black pit. 

“You don’t believe them,” Livia said. 

“I believe,” the Archon said, “that assassins would have a much less interesting story to tell me. And really, Livia, who would send a fucking Tal-Vashoth to assasinate me?”

“Someone who wanted to pin this on the Qunari,” the Iron Bull said. “Doesn’t matter if the Ben-Hassrath would never use a-” He spoke a Qunari word that Dorian didn’t recognize- “for something like that, it’d still make for a good story.” His Tevene was flawlessly middle-class Minrathian; Dorian, who’d for years had to put up with the most appallingly accented, childlike attempts to speak his birth tongue, felt a laugh clawing its way up the back of his throat. 

_So many years and you can still surprise me, Hissrad._

He heard himself laughing, but his mouth wasn’t open. It was the Archon, teeth flashing with mirth. 

“Good point,” the man said. “Good point.” And then, looking at Bull, he asked something. Dorian didn’t know the words but he recognized Qunlat, the sounds of it, the deliberate weight of each syllable.

“The Iron Bull,” Bull replied, in Tevene. “Nice to meet you. I’d offer a handshake, but, well.”

“What’s a clever man like you doing traveling with this miscreant?” the Archon asked, and Dorian felt his eyebrows shoot up his face. 

“Someone’s got to keep him out of trouble,” the Bull said, still behind Dorian, and Dorian couldn’t see the long-mouthed smile but he knew it was there. 

“That’s a big job,” the Archon said, “but you look like you’re the right size for it.”

Livia paused in her pacing and said, sharply, _“Dorian,”_ having apparently come to the same conclusion that Dorian had: that her husband was flirting with Dorian’s-

He was suddenly strangely at a loss. Partner? There wasn’t much they were able to do together. Lover? That was what he had been using, on the rare occasion he needed to label what they had, but it suddenly seemed- oddly inadequate, after six years. 

The Archon didn’t seem to react to his wife’s rebuke, but when he next spoke, he was addressing them both. “Do you have a way of returning where you came from?” he inquired. “I regret to say it, but you could cause me some considerable trouble if you hang around here.” 

“I- think so,” Dorian said, taking out the amulet. “If I can take a moment to study this. I was looking at it with- with a friend. A dwarven woman- Arcanist Dagna, do you know her? I fear she may have been transported along with us and ended up somewhere strange.” 

“The Arcanist?” the Archon said. “Of course. She is an honored guest here, and won’t be accosted, if she ended up in the palace. One moment.” He stood, picking up his staff again, and strode to the door, opening it and stepping outside, presumably to speak to whoever waited there. Livia glared at Dorian. Dorian wasn’t sure whether he dared attempt to make conversation with her. What would he say? _How’s your mother doing?_ What if her mother were dead, in this reality, or they were estranged? 

“My staff is looking for her,” the Archon said, returning. “Do you think you could take another person with you, when you go back?”

“Dorian,” Livia said again, but this time the sound was a strangled cry of pain. 

Dorian watched his own eyes close, his fingers lace together over his stomach. Familiar gestures made strange. “If you have a better suggestion,” he said to Livia, “I am all ears.”

It was clear that she did not. 

There was a soft knock at the door. The Archon answered it. When he stepped back into the room this time he was smiling. “The Arcanist has been located. We’ll meet her in the trophy hall.”

“We’re going somewhere?” Dorian asked. That seems like a very bad idea.”

The Archon looked at him for a long moment. “You’re not Archon, are you,” he said. 

Dorian sighed. “No.”

“Then of course you won’t know about the hidden passageways connecting each wing of the palace.”

“No, I suppose I wouldn’t, would I?”

“Come on then,” Livia interrupted, walking over to the large mirror that took up most of the room’s east wall, and pressing on a wrought metal flower in the frame, which seemed to cause a handle to appear, swinging the mirror aside as a door. 

“Gonna be a bit of a tight squeeze,” the Bull commented, checking out the narrow doorway into the dark. 

Livia looked him up and down. “Turn sideways and hunch over,” she said. “You’ll make it.” 

They followed her in. It was very dark inside the narrow passageway. In that darkness, Dorian reached out and took the Bull’s hand. The thick warm fingers twined between his own and squeezed. Dorian squeezed back, but let go as soon as Livia stopped moving in front of him. 

Light appeared. Dorian stepped out, blinking, into a large pillared room glittering with reflections. As Bull squeezed out of the passageway and the Archon followed him, Dorian took stock of his surroundings. 

The glittering light was coming from a variety of different-sized glass cases, and brightly polished weapons and shields securely mounted on hooks. It took his startled brain a moment to process that everything in the room had a certain very non Tevinter look; that in fact they all looked extremely… Qunari. 

He looked up at Bull. The big scarred face was expressionless, the pale eye scanning over the rows of trophies.

“Impressive, isn’t it,” the Archon said, and again it was as though he was hearing himself, and for a moment he felt the disgust, self-hatred and irony that he heard in the words without knowing what the cause was. 

“Sure is,” Bull said. 

“This one is my favorite,” the Archon said, moving up to stand next to a set of crossed swords, bound together with red and gold braid, hanging alone on a bare patch of wall. The Bull walked slightly forward to stand next to him, looking at the swords for a while.

“This isn’t a war trophy,” the Bull said. 

Dorian saw the Archon’s quick smile before it vanished away into his little beard. “”No,” he said. “It isn’t. The Ariqun gave this to me, after we both signed the Treaty of Seheron.” 

“Fasta vass,” Dorian said, astonished. “You ended the war?”

“For the moment, at least,” the Archon said. “For as long as I remain alive and in power.”

“That’s impressive,” Bull said.

“My peace may not last the year,” the Archon said. “But thank you for the compliment.” He sighed. “I plan to return these weapons, if I can. I know they have spiritual value.” 

The Bull turned to look at him. He said something in Qunlat. The Archon looked at him, and smiled a little, and for a moment Dorian felt the chill of being shut out. 

Next to him, Livia snorted. Dorian looked at her. She wore more makeup than the Livia he knew, but up close he could see that her hair was dyed, that the makeup was so thick it had to be covering dark circles, maybe wrinkles. She was younger than him, he knew she was, that had been one of the qualities his mother had listed when telling him why he’d be a fool to break off the engagement. But she seemed almost like an old woman, now. It gave her a kind of brittle dignity that made her seem like a total stranger. 

“Dorian,” she said. “You’re really Dorian?”

“As far as I know,” he said with a little laugh. “Do you remember how I showed up to our engagement party drunk and told you it was because my parents had been keeping me locked in the wine cellar? Why in Andraste’s name would you marry me after that?”

She giggled, and then looked surprised at herself. 

The Archon looked back at them. Locked eyes with Livia. A silent conversation passed between them. This, this was something Dorian recognized, both from Gereon Alexius and Livia Arida’s marriage, and even his own parents. No matter how much you hated each other, extended matrimony seemed to grant powers of silent communication. 

“I want to be a good mother,” Livia said. “I want-”

“I know,” the Archon said.

There was a polite knock at the huge double doors. The Archon strode to them, opened them a crack, and then opened them wider to admit Dagna, her hair falling out of its bun but apparently otherwise intact. “Dorian, Mr. Iron Bull!” she called as she jogged towards them, voice full of gleeful excitement. “Can you believe it this is amazing-”

“I’m glad to see you,” Dorian said. “Any idea how we get home?”

“A few ideas, yeah,” she said, smiling impishly up at him. 

“Will you need a workroom?” the Archon asked. “There’s one in the attic.”

“We should be fine with some chalk and lyrium,” Dagna said, patting her elaborate system of belt pouches. “You have the amulet, right?” This addressed to Dorian.

“Yes, I did manage to hold onto it.”

“Let’s start, then.” 

They cleared a table of its trophies, Bull carefully stacking them in a corner. Dorian put the amulet in the middle, and Dagna produced paper and ink, handing it out to Dorian and the Archon. Dorian turned to Livia. “Will you help us?” he asked.

She shook her head. “You must know I never pursued advanced studies,” she said. “I’d get in the way.”

“All right,” Dorian said, feeling guiltily relieved. There was something uncomfortable writhing in his stomach whenever he looked at Livia. _A son. We had a son. Not me. Him. Him and her-_

He pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the work.

The phrase “two heads are better than one” turned out to be… less than useful when those two heads happened to belong to the same person. Often the Archon would shout out a thought moments before Dorian himself voiced it, leaving him to glare in frustration; or it would happen the other way around. But slowly they seemed to make progress. He was vaguely aware of Bull talking to Livia, somewhere else in the room, but he couldn’t pay attention; the amulet was a difficult, intriguing puzzle.

It took about an hour before things snapped into place. “Ah,” Dorian said, and drew a glyph around the amulet with a finger. It hummed to him. “It’s absorbing ambient mana. Once the channel is filled, I should be able to activate it again.”

“You think it’ll take us home?” Dagna asked, frowning at the thing.

“It might,” Dorian said. “Or we might be snapped to another reality. This one seems to be very… focused on me. Which makes sense, as I was the one closest to the amulet when it activated again. Perhaps if someone else was holding it, we might be transported to a reality where something went differently in their life.” 

“Wherever you go,” the Archon said quietly, “it would have to be better than here.”

Dorian frowned at him. “What? Why? You seem to have done quite well for yourself. You ended a centuries-long war, for Andraste’s sake!”

“I did,” the Archon said. “And it had a cost. Many costs, really.” Dorian watched him take a breath in and then out. “May we speak alone for a moment?” 

“Sure,” Dagna said, and then didn’t move. After a moment she said, “Oh! Oh, yes, sorry,” and walked away from them down the hall, to examine a geometric wall hanging. 

The Archon looked down at the amulet, and then up at Dorian. 

“Buying the required votes in the Magisterium took me five years,” he said. “I had to make concessions. There were other things I wanted, that my allies wanted. Education reform. Stronger legal protections for slaves. Soporati representatives in government. I had to sacrifice all of these things. It did not make me popular with my own side.” 

“Does Mae stand with you?” Dorian asked.

The Archon made a choked laughing sound. “Maevaris? She votes with me in the Magisterium, but it’s been made clear to me we are no longer friends. She…” He sounded hesitant, searching for the right words. “She didn’t approve of my appointment by Radonis. She wanted- better for me, I think. But she’s not someone to stay on a sinking ship.”

“How the fuck did you manage to become Archon, anyway?” Dorian asked. “I’ve rehabilitated my reputation some, in the last few years, but I’ve never been that popular, and I don’t think Radonis even likes me.” _Why did you become Archon? That was Father’s dream, not mine._

_Why did you marry? Why?_

“I was… focused,” the Archon said. “Determined. I- I had nothing else. Tell me. Is the Iron Bull your lover?”

Dorian didn’t have to answer. The Archon simply looked at his face, and nodded.

“The turning point,” the Archon said. “Where our paths diverged. I suspect it was a stormy night on the Qarinus estate, eight years ago.” 

“He did it,” Dorian whispered. His blood felt like icy sludge in his veins. His footing was unsteady; he put a hand on the table to stop himself from stumbling. “He really did it. And it _worked_.”

“In a sense,” the Archon said. “I am no longer capable of… shaming my family as I once did. I understand that he wished to make me happy. In that goal, he failed.”

All Dorian could think was, _I would have killed myself,_ but right in front of him was the proof that he would not. That he would have tried to do something useful with his life, within the invisible cage his father had built around him. Perhaps that knowledge should have felt good. It didn’t. 

“I need to ask you for your help,” the Archon said. He raised his voice. “All of you,” he said. “Come here.” 

The Bull immediately ambled towards them, Livia following him, arms folded over her chest. Dagna was slower, but after a minute she joined the circle too. 

“Probabilities are extremely high that I will be assassinated sometime within the next six months,” the Archon said, voice not even calm, just- normal. Conversational. “This being the case, I would like to ask you to take custody of my son, and bring him to a place where he can grow up safely.”

Dorian felt the floor drop out from beneath him again. He put both hands on the table, and struggled to stay upright. “There’s no one in all of Thedas you could trust him to?” he demanded.

“He would be discovered eventually,” the Archon said. “And I do not wish for him to grow up in secret, with dead parents. I want him to be free of my mess. He deserves that.” 

“He’ll miss his parents,” Dagna pointed out. 

“We aren’t exactly model childrearers,” the Archon said. “I don’t think we even see the child for more than a few minutes a day. And I think he can tell that we-” He paused, glanced at Livia, then away. He pushed on. “That he was not conceived in love, and his existence is a reminder of that to us.”

Wonderful, Dorian thought. He’d been so worried for so long about becoming his father; he should have worried about becoming his mother, instead. 

“I know it is an enormous thing to ask,” the Archon said, looking at Dorian. “But he is your son.”

Dorian had no words in response. He blinked, and swallowed. _My son._

“Why not come with us yourselves?” the Bull asked. 

“When I said the peace would last until my death,” the Archon said, “I meant it. Six more months of my rule is six more months that young idiots and slaves and civilians aren’t dying on Seheron. This is my life’s work. I intend to see it finished.”

“Livia,” Dorian said.

She turned her face away from him. “My husband’s enemies know I am not a threat,” she said. “It is possible I will live through this. My family is here. My friends. I can’t simply leave them. And I do not think the child would thank me. I am not a maternal person. He would do better under someone else’s care.” Silence, for a moment. “I cannot ask you not to think less of me, for being a bad mother, but- We must all make our choices and live with them, must we not?”

“I understand,” Dorian said, because he did. Because she sounded utterly miserable, and he had never wanted to hurt her; had told himself once that he would die before trapping her in marriage with him.

“Of course we’ll take the kid,” Dagna said briskly. When Dorian stared at her, she said, “What? Sera’s been talking about wanting kids, I’m sure she’d be happy to take it if you don’t want it. Wait, unless we’re talking about a moody teenager, here? How old is he?”

“He’s four,” Livia said. 

Dagna shrugged. “Yeah, I’m sure that’d be fine.”

Dorian finally found his voice. He snapped, “I am _not_ letting you expose my child to- crazy experiments and- and _bees-_ ”

Dagna grinned. “You’re taking him then?”

_My child._

_My son._

When he was very young he’d played at being a father, carrying around his toys like infants. He hadn’t dared think about it much, in all the years since. He couldn’t think about it now. He was in almost as dangerous a position as the Archon, and he was so busy, so busy he had no time for himself, let alone a child. 

But he wasn’t like the Archon. He could walk away.

“What’s his name?” he asked, in a voice no louder than a whisper.

“Felix,” the Archon said. 

Felix Pavus was small for his age, but chubby-cheeked as any toddler. He sat quietly on the floor in the center of the ridiculously opulent nursery, gazing in wide-eyed astonishment at Dorian and the Archon. “Two papas,” he said, in a high sweet voice, sausage finger lifting to point, and Dorian felt Thedas shift on its axis beneath him. 

“Yes, two papas,” the Archon said. “It’s magic. Don’t worry about it.” He turned to the elven servant standing in the corner, eyes respectfully downcast. Servant or slave? Dorian wondered suddenly, with a tightness in his chest. “Leave us.” 

The Iron Bull knelt down on the carpeted floor next to the child, and Felix’s brown eyes widened and he hiccuped in a way Dorian vaguely knew was a prelude to terrified tears. The Bull smiled, and held out a giant pinky finger. “Hey there, little guy,” he said, softer than Dorian had ever heard him. The boy hiccuped again, and then cautiously took the proffered finger in his tiny grip. 

“He’s an easy enough child,” Livia said, tossing beautifully wrought toys into an embroidered bag. “No allergies, no bad behaviors.” Her hands paused, her back to the rest of them. “His last nurse turned out to be a spy,” she said. “I think he was… upset, when she was removed.”

“Poor little guy,” the Bull said. Dorian looked back at him. Felix was now sitting on the giant knee, gently being rocked up and down. He started to giggle. 

He had Livia’s mother’s eyes, but the rest of him looked pure Pavus. It was odd, seeing those features on a child’s face. Like one of his cousins’ children, but with more of him. More of his parents. 

“What’s your favorite toy, little guy?” Bull asked. 

“Dragon,” Felix said immediately. 

“Is that one in the bag?” Bull asked Livia. She shrugged. After a moment she opened the bag and started searching through it. She pulled out something wooden and painted green. Bull took it, and offered it to Felix, who shook his head. 

“Dragon’s red,” he said. 

Dorian didn’t think he would have caught Bull’s reaction if he hadn’t known the man for nearly a decade. It was just a tiny twitch, a shift of his jaw, an exhalation of breath. 

What kind of mother couldn’t recognize her son’s favorite toy?

Dorian’s mother certainly couldn’t have. He didn’t think she’d ever played with him. He could only remember seeing her a few times a week, when he’d been forced into uncomfortable clothes and sat down in the parlor for her inspection. 

Silently, Livia searched through the bag, and then handed Bull something red, and soft, and velvety in appearance. Felix reached out his chubby arms towards it. Bull placed it gently in his hands, and Felix squeezed the toy to his chest. 

Dorian felt a vibration in his jacket pocket. The amulet, humming to life. “It’s ready,” he said. He took it out of the pocket and held it in his palm.

“Well,” the Archon said. “I suppose you should go, then. We’ll say we’ve sent Felix to the countryside.” His voice was choked. When Dorian looked at him he saw tears in the eyes that looked out of his mirror each morning. 

“Hey,” Bull said. “Can someone take Felix for a moment?”

“Sure,” Dagna said. “Come sit with Auntie Dagna, Felix. She’ll tell you about lyrium destabilization.” 

Bull handed the child over to her gently, the boy looking tiny in his massive hands. Then he turned. “Master Archon,” he said. “Could I get a moment with you, maybe over in that corner?”

The Archon wiped his eyes with the back of his gloved hand, and then looked up at the Bull through his tears. “Of course,” he said. 

“Don’t be long,” Dorian said. “I don’t know what happens when this thing overcharges.”

“Won’t take more than a minute,” the Bull said. Dorian watched the two of them walk down the long length of the nursery, the Bull’s horns scraping against the whimsically painted ceiling. He told himself to look away, but he kept watching as the Bull murmured something to the man with Dorian’s face. As he put a hand gently on the Archon’s cheek, and the two of them looked at each other for what felt like eternity, before the Archon’s glittering robed body crumpled against the Iron Bull’s chest and the Bull’s strong arms folded around him. 

Dorian looked away then. His eyes met Livia’s. 

He had touched her. This other him had touched her, to make a child. Loneliness could make people do anything, he knew that very well. What had it cost him, to do it? What had it cost her? Who had they both been, afterwards? Had they recognized themselves? Recognized each other?

“I tried to make him happy,” she said, softly. “I think he tried too. Sometimes. But it broke him, what his father did. It takes all he has to hold himself together, and he never had much care left over for me. I’m glad I got to meet you, I think. I had forgotten-”

He waited for her to finish the sentence, but she only shook her head. 

“Look after Felix,” she said. “He’s an innocent.”

“I will,” Dorian said, “I swear.” He swallowed. It felt vital that he say something, but nothing was coming to him. He settled on, “Look after yourself.”

“I always do,” said Livia Herathinos bitterly. 

“Here,” Dagna said, coming over to him, Felix in her arms. He wasn’t that much smaller than she was, but dwarves were strong. “You take him.” 

Dorian lifted the child up. He was simultaneously lighter and heavier than Dorian expected. Dorian panicked for a moment, realizing he didn’t know how one was supposed to hold a child, but some instinct seemed to take over and he shifted the weight in his arms into a comfortable position. “Hello Felix,” he said through a half-closed throat.

“Hello, Papa,” Felix said, the words somewhat blurred but solemn, the brown eyes so big and deep. 

“We’re going on a trip, Felix,” Dorian said. “Does that sound fun?”

“Yes,” Felix decided. “Can Dragon come?”

“Yes, Dragon can come.” Was it Dorian’s turn to cry, now? Perhaps. 

_How could I do it,_ he wondered, _how could I make a child knowing that every time I looked into his beautiful perfect face I would only see what my father had taken from me, the cage he locked me into inside my own body and mind?_

He had forgiven his father, years ago, or something close enough to forgiveness to be filed away in the same box. Had this world’s Dorian been able to do that? Was there any way it could ever have been possible? 

“Okay,” Bull said, suddenly at his side again. “You ready to go?”

Dorian looked at Livia. “Do you want to-” _Hold your child, before I take him away forever?_

“No,” she said. “No, I- Felix?”

“Mama?” the boy said.

“Your mother loves you, Felix. Be a good boy for your father, now.” 

“All right,” Dorian said, when the silence had stretched. “Dagna, Bull, let’s join hands.” 

Just as the Bull’s right hand took his free left one, there was a distant muffled boom. The floor underneath them shook. 

“Venedhis,” the Archon swore. Livia’s face went gray. 

“This is it,” she said. “Go. Go.” 

“Dorian,” the Bull said, and Dorian turned his face sideways to look at him before realizing with a start that he hadn’t been the one being addressed. The Archon looked at the Bull with a sad, twisted smile. 

“I’m glad I had the chance to meet you,” he said. “All of you. Be well. Live gloriously.” 

“ _Anaan_ ,” the Bull said, and Dorian saw him take Dagna’s hand. Dorian pulsed energy from his fingertips into the amulet in his palm, and as a banging began on the nursery door, the world faded into white. Dorian held as tightly as he could to the child in his right arm and the hand folded around his, but as the magic swept them away he felt one of them torn away, disappearing into the void. 


	3. The Tamassran

**2**

**THE TAMASSRAN**

Dorian had said the botched spell was showing them alternate paths, that they were being pulled to different versions of themselves. After the nightmare that was Archon Dorian Pavus, the Bull expected it'd be his turn next, a suspicion that hardened into certainty as the white mist around him hardened into sand underfoot. He tried to brace himself; the magic knocked him off his feet anyways.

  
The sand was hot and warm under his knees. There was heat on his back and head, too. He took a breath, and inhaled salt and humidity and flowering fragrance, and, somewhere near, the smell of freshly baked bread. His knees were weak now for other reasons than magic. This was  _ home _ . 

Listen- the murmur of waves a few hundred feet away- the shrieking of parrots- children, laughing-

-a burst of relief because he’d been half expecting the fog and mud of Seheron. But children didn’t laugh like that on Seheron, and the bread never smelled quite the same, and the sun was never, ever this hot. This was  _ home _ .

A home that wasn’t his any more, that wasn’t safe, but it wasn’t Seheron and that was enough to make him weak in the knees.

Dorian and Dagna and the kid, he reminded himself, and staggered to his feet, brushing sand off his pants. He had an impression of sandy dunes, and no sign of his companions. Crap.

Something crashed into his shins. The Bull’s muscles tensed. His axe was on his back, not in his hands, and it was useless once something got right up next to you anyways, but there was a knife in his belt-

“You’re big,” the child said, accusingly, taking a step back from the Bull’s legs and falling with a thump onto the sand. “You’re even bigger than Tama.”

The kid was tiny, not even reaching the Bull’s knees. He was expecting Felix Pavus, for a moment, but this child’s skin was a dark deep gray. Their horns were little nubs. They had a shock of white curls framing a round baby face. They were wearing the same red-and-tan shift that the Bull had when he was their age. 

“Not much I can do about that, sorry,” the Bull said. First Archon Dorian with his terrible accent, now this child. How long had it been, since he’d spoken Qunlat to anyone but himself? Oh, there had been that Vashoth merchant in Tantervale, that had been, what, a year ago? Fourteen months?

He’d seen gray-skinned nubby kids now and again, but not  _ imekari _ , not a kid like he’d been a kid.

“Why’s your eye covered?” the child asked, peering at him. “Do you not have it any more?”

The Bull picked the kid up. That at least was something he was practiced at; Stitches’ kids loved it when he tossed them around. The Qunari child didn’t protest, just wriggled a little until they were comfortable in the crook of the Bull’s arm. “You’re a soldier, aren’t you? I can tell because you’re so big and you’ve got that big pink sword.”

“It’s an axe, kid,” the Bull said. “Where’s your Tama?” He looked around. They were standing in the middle of a sandy path. To his right he could see dunes, and hear the sound of waves. To his left the ground rose and sand gave way to thick vegetation, until the ground disappeared from his sight under thick trees. It looked like Par Vollen, all right, but not like any particular part of Par Vollen where Bull had ever been. But there was a fuckton of Par Vollen where Bull hadn’t been. It was a big ass island. 

The child pointed in the direction of the distant laughter, and the Bull walked down the path that way, trying to think. He had the crystal, but it glowed and hummed when activated, and he had no way of knowing if that would put Dorian in danger, wherever he was right now. They might be around Qunari. Dagna probably didn’t know any Qunlat- he couldn’t think of any reason she would, at least- and Dorian only knew enough to get into trouble. And while Dagna might pass as a kinda weird convert if she didn’t talk, Dorian would be a total paradox on Par Vollen. But the real problem would be the kid. Kids didn’t wander around with adults who weren’t Tamassrans.

If the Bull’s friends had landed somewhere isolated they might be fine until the Bull could find them, but if they were near a town and someone became suspicious, the local Ben-Hassrath would be called, and then- 

The sound of children’s laughter had stopped. “Tama,” the child said, and the Bull looked up, and saw an adult Vashoth standing further down the path, and several children, older than the one he had, clearly frozen in the middle of some game. The adult was big, he noticed first, almost as big as him, but immediately after that he registered the red robes and intricate rope patterns that said Tamassran. He put the child he was carrying down and bowed his head respectfully.

“Ma’am,” he said.

The child ran to their caretaker, and disappeared behind her skirts. At the threshold of his hearing he could hear the little one whispering to the two larger children. The Tamassran was silent, just stood and looked at the Bull for so long that he looked up and caught her eyes; and then he blinked. 

She was a little shorter than him. Their eyes weren’t quite on a level. That made sense. They’d have fed her differently, when she was still growing. She was softer than him, carried her weight differently, and of course her skin was unscarred, of course she still had both eyes. Her horns looked about the same size and shape as his, but they were adorned with four thick gold bands. 

_ Vishante kaffas, _ Bull thought, because Qunlat or Fereldan swear words didn’t seem adequate for the situation.

He couldn’t read her expression at all. It wasn’t like he ever spent a lot of time looking into mirrors.

“Thanks for returning this little one,” she said. Her voice- her voice was his voice, and it was weird as hell hearing it like that. Pure Eastern Par Vollen, that diction- no trace of the Seheron accent, even, let alone the different pronunciations he’d picked up in twenty-two years on the mainland. 

“No need to thank me, ma’am,” he managed, wondering frantically about his own accent, what he sounded like, before being thoroughly distracted again just by the look of her. She had hair. Long pleats of it, white streaks shining among the black. He knew he would too if he stopped shaving his head every other morning, but there was a difference between abstractly knowing that fact and seeing a receding hairline.

“You shouldn’t run so far, imeshaad,” the Tamassran said to the child the Bull had carried. “You’ve only got little legs right now.” The child mumbled something, still wrapped in the cloth of her skirts. Stiff starched cotton, it looked like, just like what his own Tama had worn.

She looked at the Bull, and it was the same look he knew from the Seheron psychological evaluations, and a shiver went down his spine. “You look pretty beat,” she said. 

“Guess I am,” the Bull said, smiling blandly. The kids were confusing. Unless the small one was really runty, they were definitely different ages, and they shouldn’t have been out on an excursion together, shouldn’t have been under the supervision of the same Tamassran. The older ones had relaxed now, seeing their Tama had the stranger situation under control. One was holding a hoop, a thin flexible thing, and the Bull suddenly remembered playing games he’d forgotten about years ago. He was really not doing a good job at not getting distracted. He looked back at the Tamassran’s unsettlingly familiar face. 

“Our school is over that hill,” she said. “There is shade and rest and cool water for you if you wish, traveler.”

He shouldn’t. He should imply he’s on an urgent errand, and move on. Find his friends. Get out of here. Don’t have tea with a Tamassran. 

“Sounds good,” he said. 

Long before the Iron Bull existed, there was a Qunari child whose Tama called him Ashkaari, as though he were a philosopher, or scientist, or scholar. He wasn’t any of those things. He was a kid who liked looking after other kids, and was good at games, and dreamed about dragons.

He had been bred to be good at hitting things, like his genetic father and grandfathers. 

He hadn’t worried much about what his future role would be in the Qun. He trusted his teachers when they told him he would be happy. He would be himself, as he was meant to be. 

The Tamassrans who raised children weren’t the ones who held the ultimate power to decide those children’s fates. But their reports were what those decisions were based off of. Ashkaari’s Tamassran had been faced with a choice. 

Aqun-athlok cases were very rare, the Bull knew that. 

Even at twelve, Ashkaari had been taller than most Tamassrans. He’d had the body of a soldier, and the brain of a spy.

_ And the heart of a mother tiger, _ Tama had said once.

“You know I’m Tamassran,” his new friend said, walking next to him along a sandy path. Around them, dunes gave way to scrub. Far to the left he saw the dark edge of a jungle. Birds flitted from bush to bush, startled by the noise of their group. 

“Ashaad,” the Bull offered in return, hand briefly touching his chest. “Though right now I’m a runner.” 

“Are you going all the way to Abandaar?”

Well, that helped orient him a bit. He nodded. 

“That’s a long slog. You could stay the night here. We’ve always got room.”

“We do,” said one of the kids. “There’s tons of empty rooms.”

“Shh,” said one of the other ones. Some whispering happened, and then the two of them ran forward over the hill. The smaller one hung back, sticking with Tama.

The Bull grunted. “I appreciate the thought, but my commander will kill me if I don’t get my message delivered on time.”

Tamassran looked at him silently for a long moment, and then said, “So I’m guessing we’ve got a parent or two in common.”

He hadn’t expected her to be so direct, but this was the way he’d approach it, if he were her. Probably. “Seems like it. It’s a funny coincidence, running into you.”

Nothing more that ought to be said. No sibling relationships under the Qun. But people were still people. She kept looking at him. Sizing him up. “Are you happy, being a soldier?” she asked at last.

He bent his mouth into a grin, shrugged his shoulders. “Asit tal-eb,” he said, and felt a deep pain somewhere in his chest. 

This wasn’t the time to indulge in- nostalgia, or regret, or whatever the feeling was. Dorian and Dagna and the kid were in danger somewhere. He needed to focus on that. On keeping his people safe. 

The path crested the hill. Before him the Bull could see a school building, smaller than the ones he remembered from his own childhood but with the same hexagonal shape, the same whitewashed walls and thatched roof. He could see a garden a bit further down the hill, and a paddock with goats and what looked like a henhouse, and a path going down by the garden to join a larger road at the base of the hill. He could see a few older children doing various tasks outside, but not as many as he would have expected.

The young child was handed off to an older one. The Bull was escorted to a pavilion outside the main building of the school. Its woven-branch walls were lined with low chests. The floor was covered in straw mats. The Bull had learned how to read in a building like this.

This was tactical, he told himself. He was getting the lay of the land. If his friends were nearby, they’d be heading for any obvious landmark. He had to find out where he was, and this woman was his best chance of doing that.

Tamassran poured him a cup of clear water and squeezed a few drops of lemon juice into it. He took a sip; the water was fresh and delicious. The children hadn’t come in with them, but the Bull suspected their conversation was being listened to. That Tamassran could take the time to talk to him alone must mean she was in a position of authority here, with assistants to watch her charges when she wasn’t personally attending to them. But he hadn’t seen any other adults.

There was a brief patter of feet from outside, and then a new child ran in through the curtain-of-reeds door. Older, maybe eleven, old enough that her hair and face paint bore some simple markers of femaleness. “Who’s he?” she asked, pointing at the Bull accusingly, high voice full of suspicion. 

“A soldier,” Tamassran said. “He’s passing through. Be respectful, Ataashi.” 

The girl’s pale eyes flicked between them, back and forth and back. “Why’s he look like you?” Her eyes narrowed. “But uglier.”

“Why don’t you think about it and see if you can figure it out yourself?” Tamassran asked. “After the birds are fed. I know you haven’t finished yet.”

The girl scowled and let out an angry whoosh of breath. She turned on her heel.

“Aw, come here,” Tamassran said, “give your old Tama a kiss.”

Ataashi kept up the stomping and glaring all the way up to Tamassran’s knees, but when the adult woman picked her up easily and tossed her lightly in the air she couldn’t help but burst into surprised giggles.

“That’s better,” Tamassran said, and held her steady at eye level so she could kiss the girl’s cheek. Ataashi giggled again and hugged Tamassran’s broad neck. 

The Bull, watching, felt the pain in his chest stab further. 

He remembered Stitches’ kids, the ways they’d loved to climb on his horns. He remembered Dorian’s son, the weight of him on the Bull’s knee, just an hour ago. 

“Go do your chores,” Tamassran said to the girl as she put her back down on the packed dirt floor. “And tell Imeshaad to either stop eavesdropping, or learn how to do it better. Go on, now.”

“But-” Ataashi said, looking back at the Bull.

“He’s a soldier of the Qun,” Tamassran said, mildly chiding. “There’s no reason to be scared of him.”

Ataashi screwed up her little face again. “I’m not scared,” she muttered, but she obediently dashed back out through the door, disappearing into the bright light of the outside afternoon. 

“That one’s for the Ben-Hassrath, for sure,” Tamassran said, fiddling with one of her pleats of hair. 

“I’m guessing you enjoy being a Tamassran,” the Bull said. 

She smiled at him, eyes full of an emotion the Bull could see but which felt too close to identify. “It’s got its ups and downs,” she said. 

“You ever wonder what life would have been like if the Viddasala hadn’t decided you were aqun-athlok?” the Bull said, taking the risk that she appreciated bluntness as much as he did. 

“Only every day,” she said. 

Krem sometimes teased the Iron Bull for liking pink, and things that were small and delicate, like painstakingly decorated little cakes at an Orlesian party or the little purple flowers that grew in rock crevices on the Storm Coast. It was something that kind of perplexed the Bull a little, though he’d never let Krem see that. He had first learned about gendered aesthetics and preferences on Seheron, from the Viddathari who mostly lived among other Viddathari and hadn’t fully been assimilated. In the Qun that wasn’t really a thing, he’d explained twelve years later, to Vivienne while she dressed him for a soiree. Gender wasn’t what you liked, it was what you did. Men and women dressed differently, wore their hair differently, painted different vitaar on their skin, but that was because it was what they were supposed to do; personal taste didn't come into it. But he’d always been a fast learner, and when the Ben-Hassrath sent him out among the bas, he’d quickly assembled the pieces that to most of them marked him as male, a big dumb crude kind of maleness at that, and it wasn’t like it was hard, fucking women and carrying a bigass weapon and laughing loudly at stupid jokes. 

Krem also called the Iron Bull a mother hen, and that hit a bit harder.

When Hissrad first realized that the bas raised their own children, it had been a shock. All responsibilities were equal under the Qun, but he’d always thought to himself that raising children was the biggest, most important responsibility. The Tamassrans trained for years. And the bas just let  _ anyone  _ do it. No wonder they had so many problems. 

The school consisted of the big whitewashed main building, the pavilion built from stripped and woven branches, an outhouse, a coop, a pigpen and, right behind the main building, a large garden, right up on the bluffs overlooking the sea. There was an herb garden, a vegetable garden, a couple of fruit trees, and a field of long grass. The Bull walked out through the grass alone, and lifted the crystal on its chain, holding it til it began to glow and hum. 

A moment later, Dorian’s voice, out of the air: “Bull?”

“Yeah. You ok, kadan?”

“Thank Andraste. Yes, we’re all right. We’re in a ghastly jungle right outside a little village that appears to be all Qunari. Which leads me to guess that we may be on Par Vollen…?”

“Good guess.”

“I cast a spell to determine your location. We’re about five miles away and getting closer, though it’s slow going carrying a toddler. I'm not sure why we were separated on arrival.”

“I have some theories!”

“Dagna has some theories, which we can go over when we’re safely home, hmm?”

“Sounds good,” the Bull said. “But stay put. I'll come to you. Less dangerous for me to move around here.”

He didn’t want Dagna or Dorian to see Tamassran, he realized. Both of them had sacrificed so much to live their own lives and be their own authentic selves. He didn’t want them knowing just how much of himself was made of what other people had wanted of him. 

It made him feel queasy. It wasn’t easy realizing just how much of a coward you were.

“You don’t know where we are, idiot. Just stay away from any locals and we’ll be there shortly.” 

The Bull stared at the crystal as it went dark and quiet. 

There was a gate in the wall that surrounded the garden. He passed through it, and out into a back path that wound its way down the hill to join the main road. He was almost down the hill when someone called out to him. He stopped, fighting down the urge to run. 

“On your way without saying farewell?”

He turned around. She was coming down the hill. At a sedate pace. The bands on her horns glinted in the afternoon light.

“I’ve got to be on my way,” the Bull explained. “I’ve tarried too long. Sorry.”

“No apologies needed,” she said, unperturbed. “I’ll walk with you as far as the well.” She was carrying a very large waterskin, he noticed now. She looked up at the sky. He followed her gaze, and saw gray clouds on the horizon. Fuck. 

“Who’s looking after the kids?” he asked. “You got an assistant?”

“Nosy minds them,” she said. He thought back, remembered the children he’d been introduced to. A gangly young teenager, fourteen maybe, with, yes, an unusually long nose. 

“I’m looking for some people,” the Bull admitted. “I was supposed to meet them in the last town but I think they might have gotten lost. They’re Viddathari.”

He could recognize her curiosity, but all she said was, “I hope you find them. It would be unpleasant to be lost in the storm that looks to be coming.”

In fact they ran into Dorian and Dagna thirty seconds before the first clap of thunder shook the landscape.

The Bull was impressed when he saw the two of them detach themselves from the thick dark wall of the jungle. He knew from experience it was impassable, so they must have spotted him and Tamassran first, and hid until they were close enough to identify the Bull. They still moved slowly and warily, though some of that might have been simply to avoid waking the four-year-old sleeping in Dorian’s arms, wrapped in a large cloth. Bull felt his body tense at the sight, his brain still churning, trying to think of a lie that would work. Four-year-old viddathari didn’t wander around loose.

“Hi guys,” the Bull said in Qunlat, knowing they probably couldn’t understand a word of it. “Uh, this is Tamassran, she’s a new friend of mine.”

Dagna bowed and Dorian nodded, both smiling politely, and the Bull thought: _ they’re not good enough actors. They honestly don’t know who she is.  _

Once he’d considered that, it was like he was looking at the two of them, him and Tamassran, through his friends’ eyes. The Bull had been so focused on the similarities he hadn’t seen just how different she looked, the way even just having both eyes changed her face. 

“A pleasure to meet you,” Dagna murmured, in Qunlat so badly mispronounced and mis-stressed that he guessed she’d learned the phrase from Dorian just today. Dorian simply bowed. The Bull wondered where on earth the two of them had stolen their clothes from, and if they’d been smart enough to bury their old things. Dorian was managing to look good even in a laborer’s shift. Dagna’s wrap was bulky enough that he suspected she'd just put it on over her leathers.

“Who is this little one?” Tamassran asked. She reached out her arms towards Dorian in the absolute certainty of one who had always been granted unquestioned authority over the realm of childcaring. Dorian hesitated. 

“It’s all right, just go ahead,” the Bull said in Orlesian, which was the one language he could be pretty sure nobody here spoke. “I’ll tell her you found him wandering in the storm, okay? Is he going to wake up and start talking in Tevene?”

“Not for at least another three hours,” Dorian said grimly. “Sleep spell.”

The Bull felt a shiver run down his back but he just said, “Good thinking,” as Dorian slowly handed Felix over into Tamassran’s waiting arms.

“They say they found them wandering on their own,” the Bull said to Tamassran, drawing on everything he’d ever learned about the art of lying. “They’re not one of yours?”

“No, we have no human children at the school right now,” she said, frowning at the little body as she gently rocked him, her arms protecting him from the cold. “And the nearest other school is forty miles away. You’re far from home, young one.”

Another crash of thunder split the glowering sky. “You’ll have to come back,” Tamassran said, brisk and businesslike. “There’s no way you’re making it to Abandaar in that.” She gestured at the darkness on the horizon. He’d forgotten how fast storms came on, here. 

Crap.

Would a little longer be so risky? How soon could Dorian and Dagna get the amulet to take them away from here? Should they go as soon as they could? Being here was dangerous, certainly, but no one was actively trying to kill them right now. 

He glanced at his friends, and then at Tamassran, at the intricate patterns on her face. How long did it take her to paint them on, he wondered? More or less time than he spent on his battle vitaar? Was it different when you were doing it with inactive paint, just for the beauty of the spirals?

He didn’t actually want to go just yet.

“Okay,” he said, and smiled. He smiled at Dorian and Dagna too, and they all three of them followed Tamassran when she began walking back along the path.


	4. The Tamassran, Part 2

**3**

**THE TAMASSRAN, PART 2**

The rain caught them and drenched them for fifteen minutes before they got to the shelter of the house. The Bull worried about Felix, but when they reached the schoolhouse and Tamassran deposited him gently onto a cot near the entrance, the cradle of her arms had kept him almost entirely dry. Dorian and Dagna were offered dry, clean red and white children’s wraps, which they accepted pragmatically enough. “I’m not sure my clothes would fit you,” Tamassran said to the Bull, looking him over critically. He laughed, and waved her offer away. He knew his pants would dry off soon enough. 

“Tama, we couldn’t find all of the chickens,” the teenager called Nosy said pleadingly, and Tamassran smiled reassuringly at him and followed him around the side of the main house, leaving the Bull, Dorian and Dagna in the covered patio at the back of the building, Felix sleeping near the door. Dorian walked over to the cot and looked down at the child, watching him sleep.

“It’ll take the amulet another six hours to recharge,” Dagna whispered in Common. “I was thinking, as soon as it stops raining quite so hard, we should probably hide out in the jungle somewhere until it’s ready to jump us again?”

“Yeah,” the Bull said, but he was looking over her shoulder, back the way Tamassran had gone. “Yeah, probably.”

There was a small pressure on his arm. He looked, saw Dorian, hand on Bull’s forearm, questions in his big green eyes. “That qunari,” Dorian said. 

“She’s me,” the Bull said, the words dragged out of him to forestall whatever Dorian might be about to say. “Yeah. She’s… who I might have been.”

“Oh,” said Dagna, in tones of revelation. “Oh, wow.”

Dorian was silent, hand still on the Bull’s arm. “Well,” he said. “I don’t see the harm in staying here a little longer, if Bull wants to. I certainly couldn’t wait to be far, far away from my own doppelganger, but yours seems considerably better company. I imagine you’re intrigued.”

“That’s one word for it,” the Bull said. 

“Oh, I wish I had my field kit on me,” Dagna complained, not for the first time since this adventure had begun. “Yes, we have to stay. We have to collect all the data we can; maybe we’ll figure out why the crystal drew us to this possible reality in particular-” She paused to take a breath, and took in Dorian and the Bull’s faces too. “You know what,” she said brightly, “I'm going to go collect some soil samples. I can test them when we get back, at least.”

“You do that,” Dorian said. He sighed. “Don’t get too wet.” The Bull watched Dagna put down the dry clothes she’d been given and, still in her soggy clothes, walk away from them, towards the edge of the covered area and through a heavy sheet of rain that looked like a wall of glass. “She means well,” Dorian said, more quietly.

“I know.”

“It’s been a long day.”

“It has.”

There was silence for a minute. The Bull closed his eye and listened to the drumming of the rain. This wasn't the garden behind the school where he'd been raised, but if he closed his eye and breathed in slowly, it could be.

He opened his eye.

“In a way it’s nice to get to see Par Vollen,” Dorian said, gazing out at the falling water, and the garden and trees that could just about be seen through it. “I doubt I’ll ever be able to visit the island in our universe.”

“Yeah,” the Bull said, “I doubt I will either.”

“Ah,” Dorian said quietly. “Sorry.”

“Shit,” the Bull muttered. “Nah, it’s fine. I’m just-”

In the ensuing loud silence, Dorian looked at him sharply. “I realize this is an astonishingly stupid question,” the human said, “but what’s wrong?” His hand rested on the Bull’s arm, in a way that told the Bull that Dorian wanted to be touching the Bull’s face, but was holding back. 

“For one thing I think that other you is probably dead,” the Bull said. It wasn’t what he’d been thinking of saying, but it was what came out. “I’m not a fan of the thought of any version of you being dead, so that’s- unpleasant.”

“If it’s weird for you, imagine what it’s like for me,” Dorian said with a short laugh. His hand lifted from the Bull’s arm, and scrubbed at his face. “I have a child, Bull. What am I supposed to do with a _ child?” _

“Raise him, I guess,” the Bull said, looking at the sleeping human toddler. “Or give him to Dagna and Sera.”

“I can’t,” Dorian said. “He knows I’m his father. I can’t just walk away from this. But he deserves better than a politician father who has no time to spend with him. Better than a house that might be invaded by assassins. I don’t know what to do.”

_ Leave Minrathous, _ the Bull wanted to say.  _ Leave the Magisterium. Leave your empire. Live with me. Let me love you and hold you and know that you’re safe every morning and every night. _

All the words were repeats from their last argument. He didn’t speak them into the air. Just let the absence of them sit in the rainy silence between them. 

“You’re not all right,” Dorian said after a while. “You’re not all right, and I would like to know why, just on the off chance that there is something I might do to help.”

“She’s a woman, Dorian,” the Bull said. He didn’t want to say the words, but he did anyway.

“Well, yes,” Dorian said. He looked puzzled, and then began to look offended. “I know. Did you forget who my closest friend in Minrathous is? I do understand these things.”

“You don’t,” the Bull said frankly. Dorian’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not Qunari,” the Bull continued. _ Neither am I _ , he reminded himself viciously. “I know you get it with humans. Krem and your Mae and the Inquisitor.”

“The Inquisitor is a dwarf, not a human,” Dorian pointed out, because his depths of pedantry were endless. The Bull shrugged a little. 

“You know what I mean. It’s different with Qunari. It’s- she’s me, Dorian.” 

Dorian was shaking his head. “What, like Archon Dead Inside was me? No. He was a different man, and we had nearly thirty years in common! You and her have, what, thirteen?” 

“I could have been her,” the Bull said, and suddenly he felt he needed to sit down. There were chairs, sturdy-looking wicker things large enough to hold his weight, and he pulled one over and sat down carefully, avoiding putting too much weight on his bad leg. Usually this time of an evening it’d start to ache, but the warm air here seemed to be doing wonders for his collection of damaged parts. 

Dorian was looking at him pensively. After a moment he opened his mouth, and the Bull thought, here it comes. “Are you saying,” Dorian said, and the Bull could hear how much Dorian was trying to be  _ careful _ , “that you think  _ you _ might also be-”

“I’m not a woman,” the Bull interrupted, because he couldn’t bear to watch Dorian struggle with it. “I mean it's not something you- ugh. It  _ is  _ something you are, but I'm not, because the Qun didn't tell me I was, and no amount of thinking about it changes that.” He knew that made zero sense to a Vint. He felt his hands work into fists where they rested on his thighs. “But I think maybe I misled you. Lied through omission, and didn’t ever think about it until now. Let you think I was a man because I felt like one and not because that’s what the Qun decided I was.”

Dorian hesitated, and then he pulled up the other chair, and sat down across from the Bull. A tired smile lifted one corner of his moustache. “Darling,” he said, “I’m not sure how that makes you different from any other man in Thedas.”

The Bull thought about that. He could see Dorian’s point. To be honest, it all made his head hurt. These kinds of questions were for the priests who interpreted the Qun, not a simple mercenary like him. 

Dorian reached out and took his hand. The Bull stared at their hands, the way Dorian’s was so much smaller, the reminder that he and the Bull were two different kinds. “You’re not part of the Qun any more,” Dorian reminded him. “If you want to be something different… you can be.”

The concept of going aqun-athlok when they got back to their universe, back to mainland Thedas, was absurd in its impossibility. It was one thing for someone like Krem to decide to switch. A seven and a half foot, five hundred pound Vashoth was something else entirely. What would it even involve? Changing his job? Changing his clothes? It was hard enough to find pants that fit. 

But he was thinking about it, wasn’t he? Had been thinking about it in some corner of his brain since he first saw Tamassran. What did that mean?

Meant that he was getting stupid in his old age, probably. 

His hand tightened around Dorian’s. Dorian squeezed back. 

_ You love men, _ the Bull wanted to say, because it was stupid to keep avoiding it.  _ You only love men. _

“I’m too old for this shit,” the Bull said. “ _ Vashedan _ . You’ve had a really shitty day. I shouldn’t be putting anything more on you.”

“Amatus,” Dorian said. “If today’s events have clarified anything for me, it’s that… what I have with you is space to be who I am, and to choose that for myself. I want it to be that for you, too.” 

The Bull looked at their joined hands. He looked at the child, sleeping a few feet away. He thought about the way it had felt to bounce that child on his knee, to see Dorian’s delighted laugh on a tiny face. Qunari men didn’t do that kind of thing. It wasn’t men’s work, and he’d always done men’s work, even after he was no longer Qunari.

Hadn’t he?

Krem’s groan, in his mind’s ear.  _ We’re always careful, Mother. Stop worrying.  _

Dorian, tied to the villa bedposts in a gorgeous overgrowth of crimson knots, held secure and safe as the Bull took care of him, the way he’d learned from the Tamassrans who’d first shown him this kind of spiritual work. 

The porch door opened, letting in a spray of rain and sound. Tamassran entered, squeezing out her hair and skirt. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” the Bull said.

“Once the rain stops I’ll send Nubby down to the village to ask about our lost imekari,” she said. “I’m worried they may have been lost for quite some time, to end up way out here.”

“It’s an odd place for a school,” the Bull said, pushing just a little. “Out here away from the cities.”

“Yes, we’re a little special,” she said with a smile that gave nothing away. “Where’s your other friend?”   


“Just gone for a walk,” the Bull said. “She’ll be back in a minute.”

“Good,” Tamassran said, “it’s almost time for dinner. How’s the little one doing?”

“No fever,” the Bull said, but she walked past him to check anyway. “I think they’re just tired.” 

“Poor thing,” Tamassran said. “Okay, come help chop vegetables.”

Dinner was a little awkward, Dorian and Dagna sitting in silence trying to figure out how to eat their kebabs, but the kids were loud and funny in ways that transcended the language barrier, and before long everyone was laughing. The Bull found himself on the verge of tears, eating the food. He had the totally irrational feeling that his own Tama was just in the kitchen, that she’d come in any moment and tell him to finish eating his vegetables. It had been so many years since he’d even tasted some of these spices, but the memories all came flooding back as though it had only been a day. 

Felix was still asleep after they’d finished washing up. The Bull suspected Dorian had snuck out to cast Sleep on him again. That couldn’t be good for his little brain, but the Bull trusted Dorian, as much as he trusted anything in any world.

“Ataashi and Imeshaad will show you to our guest room,” Tamassran said to Dorian and Dagna. “I'd just like to… talk to Ashaad here for a minute. About… personal things.”

The Bull didn't like splitting up, but there was a new vulnerability in Tamassran’s face that hadn't been there before. He was fascinated; had he looked like that when he begged the Boss for an order? When he asked Dorian to let him come to Tevinter? 

“Go on,” he said, in slow, careful Qunlat, and waved his arm for emphasis. His friends hesitated, then followed the children.

Tamassran waved him to the table, then sat down herself. “Nosy, get some tea,” she said. The Bull found himself thinking that it was too late in the day for tea, before he remembered that the word also referred to a hot non-stimulating drink. Tama had made it for him whenever he had nightmares.

“You never told me,” Tamassran said. “Are you happy? As a soldier?”

He'd been expecting this, but that didn't mean he was prepared for it. “I'm good at it,” he said eventually. “It's what I was built for.”

“Me too,” she said. “But I was told to do something else.”

It hit him, suddenly. This Qunari had never been stabbed in the back by a scared teenager in the middle of a fishing village square. She’d never seen barn-high piles of burning corpses. Never helped a doctor lay out the bodies of poisoned children. Maybe she’d never had any reason to doubt her own sanity. Never felt the blood lust, the need to kill, and never had to question herself after a particularly gory battle:  _ did I do that for the right reasons? Am I still in control?  _

While he was still a part of the Qun he’d never begrudged the peace enjoyed by those he fought for. 

Nosy came in with two mugs that steamed even in the warm evening air. “Thanks,” Tamassran said, and ruffled his hair. He ducked his head, embarrassed, and left quickly.

“Thanks,” the Bull said. The tea didn't taste quite the way he remembered, but it had been twenty-seven years.

“Is it hard?” the Bull asked. “Being aqun-athlok? Was it a shock?”

She frowned. “It's different,” she admitted. “I used to get a lot of double takes. But I don't talk to that many new people, and folks get used to it. It took a while for me to get used to the pronouns, but we all have to get used to new names anyway.”

“Your Tamassran must have thought you'd make a really good teacher.”

“Oh no,” Tamassran said. The frown had smoothed out, and nothing had replaced it. “I wanted to be one, but she said that'd be a waste of my brain.”

The Bull stared at her.

“You were an interrogator,” he said. He wanted to kick himself. Idiot. Huge blundering idiot. 

“For ten years,” Tamassran said. “One day I found I had turned from my purpose. I couldn’t do it anymore. I asked my superiors to let me be a tamassran, and they granted my request.”

“You knew I wasn’t an ashaad,” the Bull said. 

“From the moment I met you,” she confirmed. It was like hearing a weird echo now; their tones when they spoke were exactly the same, matched unreadability. 

The Bull stood up, and made to move for the door. He knew he’d make it that far at least; there was no way Tamassran could take him in a fight, bad leg or no. However, at that point Nosy came in, a nocked shortbow in his hands, an arrow pointed at the Bull’s eye. 

The Bull could still probably make it, if he was willing to break a kid’s arm. The Bull wanted to tell Tamassran she was a bastard, even if the insult made no sense in Qunlat, but instead he stood very still and met her eyes square on and said, “Please.” 

He wasn’t pleading for himself.

He hadn’t heard anything, and he would hear something if the Ben-Hassrath were here. Even if they managed to get the drop on Dorian, he’d have blown something up before they took him down. The Bull would have heard something.

“No,” Nosy said, his voice high and quavering and full of fear and anger. “No, fuck you! You’re not taking Tama! You’re not taking Taash!”

“Wait,” the Bull said. “Hold up. What?”

There were tears running down the kid’s face. “It’s not her fault! She didn’t ask to be a- to be able to do those things! She didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Oh,” the Bull said. “Oh, you idiots.” He couldn’t help himself, he laughed, or tried to. It came out as a wheeze. Something was wrong with his lungs. Something was wrong with the floor too. It was up close now. 

“The tea was poisoned,” Tamassran said calmly, from above and behind him.

The Bull grabbed at the crystal on his neck, missed, grabbed again and managed to hold on, feeling the buzz and heat as it woke. “DORIAN,” he yelled with all of his strength, but he wasn’t entirely sure any sound had come out at all. His vision was going fuzzy. 

He deserved this, for being so slow and stupid, but Dorian and Dagna- if there was an afterlife, Sera and the Boss were going to be pissed at him- the possibility that only he might die, and they would get the saar-qamek, and Felix with a double dose of magister’s magic in his blood would get the chains, was enough to make him try to drag himself towards the door by his fingernails, but his hands weren’t working either-

He heard noise, and felt the dry heat and whoosh of vacuumed air that meant fireballs summoned in the room above him. He thought he heard voices, shouting, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The world faded, and he had to concentrate hard to bring it back into focus. Someone was kneeling next to him. A warm hand was on his face, and he found he was able to reach up and grab it, squeezing it tightly. He opened his mouth and managed to say, “Poison.” Hoped he’d said it in the right language.

“Get him sitting up,” he heard Dagna say in Common, and next thing he knew the dwarf was feeding him charcoal. The Bull did his best to choke it down, and a few moments later he was vomiting onto the floor. Dorian was supporting him, Dorian was wiping his mouth with Dorian’s own sleeve. Dorian was okay, then. Okay.

  
  


Probably not that much time elapsed between his collapse on the floor and when he came back into full awareness of himself, lying on a sleeping mat propped up with pillows so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. Dorian was sponging his face with a wet cloth. The Bull touched Dorian’s wrist to make him stop, and Dorian immediately stilled. 

“Thanks,” the Bull whispered, throat sore from stomach acid, and Dorian’s hand trembled.

“You are an idiot,” Dorian told him harshly in Tevene.

“Yeah,” the Bull agreed, in the same tongue, “I really-” He stopped when he felt a kiss pressed hard against his cheek. 

“Never frighten me like that again, amatus,” Dorian said, voice shaking as much as his hand. 

“Can't make any promises, kadan,” the Bull said weakly. He looked around. Dagna offered him an earthenware cup of water.

“It was quite an interesting poison they gave you-” she began, but Dorian made a shushing noise. “I'll tell you later,” she whispered theatrically.

The Bull gratefully tipped the water up to his mouth, but his eye didn't settle until it spotted Tamassran, behind Dorian, leaning against a doorframe. Were they upstairs?

“Guessing you figured out I'm not Ben-Hassrath,” he said to her.

She snorted. “You’re heart-partners with a Bas-Saarebas,” she said, gesturing at Dorian, who glared at her. “No shit you're not Ben-Hassrath.”

He wanted to protest. After all, he'd invited Dorian into his bed before he went Tal-Vashoth. But… would he have gone further? Invited him into his heart as well? If he hadn’t known his heart belonged to him to do with as he pleased?

So instead he said, “And you’re sheltering an  _ imesaari _ .” He modified the word from its original harsher form, wondering if Ataashi or Nosy or any of the other kids might be nearby listening. 

Tamassran smiled, harsh and humorless. “I told you I lost my way.”

The Bull had never even considered it. There’d been no ime- no mages in his school that he could remember. He knew what his Tama would have done if there had been. What she would have had to do. What she probably had done, statistically speaking. She had been a good Qunari. 

The Bull was not. Not in any universe, apparently.

“What the hell are you doing here, if you're not investigating me?” Tamassran asked. “I'd guess you were making a run for it with these two  _ bas  _ and the kid, but a _ bas-saarebas _ wouldn't end up on this side of the island with their lips unsewn, and now that I know you're not Ben-Hassrath I'd wager you've been Tal-Vashoth for a while.”

No gambling under the Qun, not for money since there was no money, but the words still existed because there were games that involved wagering. Tamassrans knew a lot of games, since they were a major diagnostic tool. But he was distracting himself now. 

“Magic,” the Bull said. The word was an ugly one in Qunlat. “We’re from… somewhere else. Came here by accident.” She had stiffened. “We’re not demons,” he reassured her hurriedly, and then wondered, did she have that fear? He remembered having nightmares about possession long before he saw it happen on Seheron, but would it have stayed a small, childhood fear if he hadn't ever had to face it head on? He looked her straight in the eyes. She would only be convinced by the full truth. “I'm not your brother. I'm you. I'm a version of you who went into the Ben-Hassrath instead of the priesthood.”

She was very still. After a while, she said, “Tama used to call me…”

“Ashkaari,” the Bull obediently finished. “Because we were her little explorer. We used to pretend we were the famous Ashkaari and the little lizards on the bluffs were dragons that we'd discovered.”

She blinked. “Well, crap.”

“Yeah,” the Bull said. “It’s freaky, right?” In fact, he was pretty impressed she hadn’t gone back to trying to kill him. Secret criminal or no, she was a Tamassran and he was a violent  _ bas  _ who’d just admitted to being covered in magic. 

“Freaky is one word for it,” she admitted. She eyed him. “I went Tal-Vashoth in some other universe.”

He wondered what she was thinking. He knew what Hissrad would have thought, if he could meet the Iron Bull now.

“Will you let us go?” the Bull asked.

She grinned. “I will,” she said. “With one condition.”

“Will it take us home now?” the Bull asked. He was out of the bed, and only leaning on Dorian a little. Felix was stirring sleepily in his arms. Dagna was holding the amulet. 

“I think it’s more likely it’ll take us on one more trip. Since there were three of us near it when it was activated.”

“So we’re gonna visit a version of you next?”

“Most likely.” She shrugged. “But don’t worry. I can’t imagine it’ll be particularly dangerous. Maybe we’ll have to hang out in Orzammar for a while, but no one’s going to try to kill you or brainwash you. Probably.”

“Let’s hope it’s just one more trip,” Dorian said dryly. “I’m not sure how many more I can stand.”

He looked across the grassy field, misty in the early morning light, at the two Qunari a few feet away. 

The Bull had always liked kids, always enjoyed spending time with them, and always knew he'd never raise one. But there was no way he could ever have anticipated this situation.

Ataashi scowled at him. She had a very small bag slung over one shoulder, and her hair was strictly braided back.

“Look,” the Bull said, “I'm a mercenary. It's not safe with me. And these two live in Minrathous. It's not good for Vashoth there.”

“Come on,” Dagna said. “We’ll work it out. We’ve got one kid already, right?”

Easy for her to say. But the Bull found himself thinking,  _ well, we mostly do hunts and bounties these days, we could leave her in town for a day or two… I was thinking about retiring in a few years anyway, once I had enough saved up for a nice cottage on the Tevinter-Nevarra border… if Dorian pays for a magic tutor for her, maybe it'd work... _

“Whatever you can give her,” Tamassran said, “it'll be more than I can do for her.” There was deep pain in her voice.

Ataashi ran to her, and the older Qunari knelt down to embrace her. The Bull had to look away and blink to clear his eye. But he heard the child whisper, “will I ever see you again?” and her Tama answer, “No.”

He'd never see his Tama again, either. But at least that was a result of his own choices.

When he could see clearly again, Ataashi had stepped away. Her tiny face was screwed up in concentration, focused, the Bull guessed, on not crying.

“Thank you,” Tamassran said.

“You could come with us too,” Dorian pointed out.

“Nah. My other kids need me. And there's still good I can do here.”

The Bull thought,  _ she was expecting an investigation _ . Aloud, he said, “They'll get you eventually.”

“It is to be,” she said, and shrugged, and smiled. Dorian looked from one of them to the other, a look of surprised delight on his face.

“You really are the same person,” he murmured in Tevene. “Well, it's probably for the best then. One of you is enough for any reality.”

The Bull nodded. He reached out his hand to Ataashi. She glared at him.

“You're  _ not  _ my Tama,” she insisted.

“I'm not,” he agreed. “I'm your, uh, uncle? Uncle Bull?”

Dagna snorted. “That's dreadful,” Dorian said. 

“I know this situation sucks, kid,” the Bull said. “But I'm on your side. I promise.”

She took his hand. What choice did she have, after all? The tiny weight of it seemed to shake the Bull to his core. 

If he sold all his gear and did a little blackmail he would have enough to feed two mouths for a while. Krem had been ready to lead the Chargers for years. And then maybe… he’d have time to figure out who he was without the boys. Without the fighting and killing and information-gathering, the stuff the Qun had left to him. Time to figure out just what it meant to him to know that Tamassran was out there. 

That path might take him away from Dorian, Dorian who was on his own journey, had confronted his own demons and come away with his own child, a child who was clinging to the Bull’s neck right now as though he belonged there. The Bull was pretty sure Dorian would help support Ataashi, whatever happened between them. But it could be painful and ugly and his stomach twisted with unformed fears and even vaguer hopes. There was nothing to be done about it right now.  _ Asit tal-eb _ . The mantra had given him a lot of comfort over his life. Nine years ago he'd started to work out what it meant when you added in making choices beyond submission or death, and he was still very far from done with that problem.

Ataashi looked at Dorian. “Can you teach me how to be safe from the night monsters?”

Dorian nodded. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness, and the Bull was a little ashamed of himself for thinking there might be.

Ataashi turned back to Tamassran. “Tell the others I said goodbye.”

“Of course I will. Take care of yourself, little dragon.”

Dagna passed the amulet to Dorian. “Ready?” she asked him.

“As I’ll ever be.” He took a deep breath, and then blew it out over the amulet, which began to glow a sickly green. He slipped the cord over his neck. “Join hands, everyone.” He offered one hand to Ataashi, who grabbed it nervously, and the other to Dagna. 

The last thing the Bull saw before the world dissolved was Tamassran’s face, the tears in her eyes.

Then his head hit something hard, and everything was black.

  
  


He woke up to the sound of Dagna cursing. 

“Did I hit something?” he asked. 

“A rock, yes. With your head. I have no idea how badly you’ve damaged your skull.”

The Bull was lying on the ground. He reached a hand up to touch his head. It came away sticky. “Why’s it all dark?”

“Don’t worry, you haven’t gone blind. We’re in a cave. In the deep roads, judging by the smell. Yes, I can tell.” 

The Bull reached up carefully, and when his hands didn’t encounter a cave ceiling, very slowly sat up. “Dorian? The kids?”

“No idea. Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

He groped for the sending crystal. “Ah, crap.” It wasn’t there. The cord must have snapped. He rolled onto his knees and started searching around for it. 

“Hey, squeeze your eye closed,” was all the warning he got before brightness flared behind his obediently closed eyelid. A few minutes later he cautiously opened it. Dagna was holding a flare that burned with a bright green flame, and the wick didn’t seem to be being consumed by the flame, at least not very fast. 

He looked down, and felt sick again. Green light glinted from shards of shattered crystal on the floor of the cave.  _ “Crap.”  _

The cave opened up into a wider corridor. Dagna and the Bull walked along it, for lack of anything better to do. The Bull’s horns scraped the ceiling. The darkness was like a physical force all around them. “Any idea how far down we are?”

Dagna shivered. “Really far. I think. My stone sense was never the sharpest.”

Ten minutes of walking later they both started to feel a cool breeze on their faces. The Bull looked at Dagna, who shrugged back. They kept walking. 

“Is it me or is it getting brighter?” the Bull asked. 

Dagna extinguished her flare. There was indeed a blue glow, coming from up ahead.

“I don’t like this,” the Bull grumbled. Dagna was silent. They walked forward. 

The light grew stronger and stronger, and then the tunnel opened up, and they stepped out onto a cliff above a sea of glowing blue. 

“Oh,  _ shit _ ,” Dagna said.

[ ](https://imgur.com/k5P3CLR)

Ataashi, by [AniDragon ](https://twitter.com/anidragoncreate)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking through this odd story! There is another chapter, The Shaper, floating out there in the void of possibility, but this fic ballooned out beyond what I was prepared for so I decided to end it here for now. Endless thanks to my wonderful artist AniDragon.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes (contains spoilers for the whole fic):
> 
> The second chapter delves into an alternate timeline where Halward Pavus succeeds in using blood magic to alter Dorian's sexuality. No details of the blood magic itself are shown but the story explores Dorian's emotional reactions to a reality where he is married to a woman and they have a biological child. 
> 
> The third chapter explores a reality where Iron Bull was assigned the role of Tamassran as an adolescent, and therefore became aqun-athlok. Meeting his alternate self leads our Iron Bull to question his own gender identity and expression, and the potential impact exploring such things might have on his relationship with Dorian, but he doesn't come to any dramatic conclusions and the two of them are still together at the end of the story and planning on raising adopted children together.


End file.
